


Sea Skin

by Sekiraku



Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Blood and Gore, Character Death, F/F, F/M, Fantasy, Historical, Historical Fantasy, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Original Character(s), Selkies, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 19:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18289097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sekiraku/pseuds/Sekiraku
Summary: Strange, awkward, and not given to emotional displays, Àile lives an unhappy life on the unforgiving soil of the Orkney Islands, relieved only by the love of her son and her best friend. She isn't like the other islanders, and everyone knows it. But one day, when tragedy strikes, things will reach a boiling point and the full extent of Àile's differences will be revealed.





	Sea Skin

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a long time ago and I've always been fond of it. I thought I'd finally expose it to the open air and get some feedback. :) All comments (other than gay-bashing) are welcome!

There is a sharp wind chasing the thin shroud of clouds over the sky, but the sun still beats down so fiercely that I feel it in my skin and my burning muscles. I run my tongue over my lips, feeling their dry ridges and tasting salt. Whether it comes from the sea air or my own sweat, I can’t be sure. My back throbs, and I settle my basket on the shale before straightening to rest for a moment.

Birgid is looking at me. My eyes are weak, but I can still feel her rough grey gaze chafing at me. She’s the worst of the village gossips, but certainly not the only one. They say that they suspect me because I spend all my time staring at the sea and don’t either honor the old North gods or attend the Irish priest’s mass, but I know that isn’t what truly bothers them. They hate me because, whatever else I could say about him, my husband Maddock is the best fisherman on Orkney, and I never have to watch my son go to bed hungry. 

I hear Birgid making her way over to me- my ears more than make up for my eyes. Before she can reach me, I stoop and begin gathering seaweed again. I can’t stop her from talking to me, but I can stop her from picking over this spot.

“Good morning, Àile,” she says warmly, as if the sun weren’t making me sweat enough. “Fine pickings today.”

“Quite.” I keep my eyes on my work.

“Such a dreadful storm! It’s a mercy neither of our men were on the sea,” she says, as if she wouldn’t smile behind her hand if Maddock were drowned and I left destitute. “But it makes easy work for us today, doesn’t it?”

The Orcadians dread the sea, but they also depend on it. Without it, there would be no fish, and no seaweed to fertilize our fields. But more of the island’s men die in the waves than in their beds, and this duality seems to bother the islanders. Maddock has compared the sea to a woman with milk in one teat and poison in the other. I am not Orcadian, and I see nothing troubling about it. Why should the sea give and ask nothing in return? The men eat the fish, so the fish must also have their go at the men.

Birgid has started picking up seaweed next to me, and I speed up my own work. If the seaweed is gone, she'll have to go away again. 

“The midwife’s husband was drowned, had you heard?” she says.

“No.” This catches my attention, and I look up. Birgid is smiling. She loves being the one to tell bad news, and I feel like biting her. Hertha the midwife is good and sweet. She helped me when my Hallvard was a baby and I didn’t know what to make of him. Her misfortune shouldn’t bring a smile to anybody.

“What happened?” I hate to gratify this woman, but I have to know. Birgid’s smile seems to have more teeth than the grin of a shark who tastes blood.

“Well, you know how him-that-was-taken always had to go farther out than any of the others,” she begins, being careful not to use Thorfinn’s name and draw his ghost.

What she says isn’t true. He was just as careful as any other fisherman. After all, he had Hertha to go home to. But Birgid has to tell herself that he was in the wrong, or she will have to believe that it could as easily have been her own man.

She continues her story as we work our way down the beach with all the other women, trying to gather what we can before the tide rises and the sea reclaims its treasures. She tells me how Thorfinn’s boat was caught in a riptide and pulled out into the hungry embrace of the waves, how the others tried to reach him but had to save themselves, how splinters of his boat washed up early this morning and Hertha had screamed at the water’s edge. It’s the same tale we tell each other a dozen times a year, but this time it’s different. It’s Hertha.

I rush home, ignoring the pain I always feel when I move away from the sea. My basket isn’t quite full, but I don’t care. I burst through the door and fling my haul into the corner. 

“Hall!” My son doesn’t answer… either he’s finished his chores and joined his friends in the village, or his chores aren’t done and he’s left anyway. This means there won’t be anyone to tell Maddock where I’ve gone. He’s bound to be upset… he only grudgingly allows me to collect seaweed with the other women… but that can’t be helped.

When I come to Hertha’s house, I find a small crowd of old women. Too weak and sore to work, they spend their days scolding the village children and making much of small news. Events such as births and deaths draw them in swarms.

I don’t like them. Their frailty seems unnatural. Among my own people, no one ever lives beyond their strength. I try to push through the crowd without speaking to anyone, but a gnarled hand grabs my arm, and I have to hold myself back to keep from snapping.

“It was bound to come,” Old Frigga says, as if I’d asked her a question. Spittle flies through the gaping spaces between her surviving teeth. “Cursed, those two. Thirty years wed and no child? Who ever heard of a barren midwife?”

I pull away, but Günnar, the lone man in the village to reach such old age, accosts me next. “Was it you who cursed ‘em? You’re a witch, if you’re not something worse.”

I look into his face. The old man is interested, but not angry or frightened. I feel a smile stinging my chapped lips.

“No,” I say firmly. “She’s my friend.”

I don’t add that she’s my only friend. I don’t have to. Günnar and Frigga are nodding, and they let me pass.

I knock on the door, but there’s no response. 

“It’s Àile,” I say hesitantly. It surprises me, how relieved I am when she opens the door to me. 

Hertha isn’t as old as the women outside her home, but she looks like it today. Her eyes, usually a pale blue, are so shot with red as to be unrecognizable, and that’s just the part I can see through her puffy lids. Her cheeks are hot and tearstained, and her hair looks like a razorbill’s nest, but it’s the blind despair on her face that shocks me. I am not skilled at reading people’s expressions, but there is no mistaking this one.

She steps silently aside, and I enter the cottage. The cramped little space is full of pain as thick and tangible as smoke. My eyes flicker to the corner, where something wooden has been smashed to splinters… a trencher, perhaps? I suppose the house had one more than necessary after last night, but the island has few trees, and wood is dear. She shouldn’t have done it. 

“I’m sorry for the mess.” Hertha has seen the direction of my gaze, and she stoops to gather the wreckage. “I just… I don’t know what came over me.”

Her hands shake badly, and she drops the splinters of wood as quickly as she can pick them up. She hisses under her breath as she scrabbles on the floor, and I see a flash of scarlet on her palms.

I cross the room quickly… my speed, at least, has not deserted me. I squat down in front of her and grasp her wrists. Hertha sucks in a breath and tries to pull away from me, but I hold firm. Gently, I tip her palms up until she opens her fingers and lets the splinters drop. They thud softly onto the packed earth between us.

Hertha’s hands are as hard and red as anyone’s on this island. But I can still see the dried blood caking her fingers. It’s so thick under her nails that they’ve turned black. I raise my face to hers, and as soon as her eyes meet mine, she begins to sob.

I begin stroking her hair as she sags against my chest and cries. It doesn’t trouble me to be silent. When I was young, my family and I barely used our voices at all. We had no need for them- a tilt of my brothers’ heads or gleam of their soft brown eyes was as good to me as an hour of these islanders’ talk. The old pain sinks its teeth into me at the thought of them, fresh as the day Maddock kidnapped me, and for a moment I wish I could learn to cry like Hertha. Perhaps it would bring me some peace.

Finally, she tires herself out. She sits back on her heels and looks at me. Her face is like something out of a ghost tale, but her mouth tries for her usual sweet smile.

“I’m sorry, Àile,” she says softly. 

“What water do you have in the house?” I ask.

By now, Hertha is used to my directness, and doesn’t even blink. Her gruesome hand gestures to a large pail next to her hearth. I draw her over to the bench Thorfinn carved and sit her down, then reach for the ties of her dress. Hertha’s head jerks up, and she looks at me with questioning eyes.

“You tore yourself.” It isn’t a question. As soon as I saw the blood on her nails I remembered my own first nights on Orkney, how I ripped at my skin as if I could pull it off and make my escape. Instead, I made scars.

Hertha drops her eyes and allows me to finish with her lacings. I hope she doesn’t notice the tremble in my fingers.

The first time I saw Hertha naked, I had been on the island less than a year. I had begun speaking… not as much as Maddock would have liked, but enough that he was beginning to let me leave the cottage for short periods of time. I barely knew the other villagers by sight, except for the Irish priest, Father Brendan. He had come to the cottage several times, asking after my health. Maddock turned him away every time, with great politeness. Maddock worships Thor and All-Father Woden and the rest of the old gods, but he fears the priest and his church too much to be rude. The last time Father Brendan came that year, he brought Hertha with him. She and I peeked at one another from behind the men as the priest spoke.

“Maddock, last time I came, I couldn’t help but notice your wife’s… condition,” he said delicately. “I thought perhaps she should meet with the midwife.”

“I thank you for your trouble, Father, very much.” Maddock nodded so quickly that I wondered whether his head would break off. “But my wife is not yet in her seventh month. Surely there’s no rush.”

“Come on, Maddock.” Hertha’s voice made me think of the crackle of flames, but her smile was soft enough to sooth even Maddock’ pride. “I’m not seeking to bother your wife, I simply want to meet her. I’m going to the stream, and I’d like her to join me.”

Maddock thought a long time before giving his leave, but the priest and the midwife both looked so pleased at the permission that he smiled as well when he sent me on my way. Hertha drew her arm through mine as we turned away from the cottage. I went stiff with the effort it took not to growl at her, but she didn’t notice, or pretended not to. 

We left the priest in the village, and Hertha and I continued on to the stream. Hertha began undoing her clothes immediately, but the water was so inviting that I couldn't wait. I threw myself into it fully clothed, and the bitter chill was the closest thing to a homecoming I will ever have.

When I lifted my head out of the water, Hertha's laughter was filling the air. I turned to look at her, and she was doubled over, clutching herself as if she feared she would laugh herself to pieces. 

"I knew you were a funny one!" she giggled. She was bracing her hands against her knees now, with her long gray-and-brown tangles of hair falling over her like a cloak. "It's smelly work, being a fisherman's wife, but most of us at least remember to undress before bathing. You must have given your poor babe quite a turn!"

Then she straightened, her naked flesh pale in the afternoon light, and I stopped thinking of anything. 

I hadn't known people could look like that. Maddock was all hard lines and rough hands, no matter how gentle he tried to be, and by then I understood that he did try. But Hertha... _Hertha _... she curved like a wave, and the flesh of her thighs and belly and breasts looked as soft and loose as water. I wondered if she would run through my fingers if I tried to hold her.__

____

____

She splashed into the water next to me, squealing joyfully at the chill. I could have put out a hand to touch her, but I wanted to do it so badly that it scared me, and I didn't dare. 

These thoughts fill me as I undo Hertha’s gown. As many times as she's undressed before me, I still find it hard to control my breath as I peel away the fabric to reveal her breasts and the dome of her belly. A whale's song would haunt me less.

When I move behind her, I see that I was right. There is a jumble of deep red lines gouged from her flesh, some of them still oozing blood. I dip the rag in the water and put my other hand on an uninjured part of her shoulder.

“This’ll sting,” I say, and she nods. 

I clean the deepest wounds first, and cringe at every gasp that escapes Hertha’s lips. I have to dip the rag again and again, wringing the pink trickle onto the dirt floor first so I won’t taint the rest of the water. I don’t like it when my own blood soaks into the ground—I hate for the land to own me any more than it already does. But I like the idea of Hertha’s blood in the earth. Perhaps it will anchor her, and keep her from drifting away on the tide of her pain.

After all, I know all about being bound to a place.

When the last scratch has been swabbed, I am suddenly crushed by my own helplessness. What else can I do for her? Hertha would know what to do for me. She knows about bandages and healing herbs. She knows how to keep things alive. I only know how to wait and see whether or not they die.

Once, that didn’t bother me. Death is as natural as life, after all, and life cannot go on without it. When our mother was killed by a black-and-white whale, my brothers and I were untroubled. Today it was her, tomorrow it would be the whale, or one of us, or someone we had never met. There was no point getting upset.

Hertha was there the moment I first lost sight of that balance. She put my baby beside me as I lay exhausted on my pallet after hours of squatting and pain. It was Hertha who gave me my Hall, and I will love her forever if only for that. I have never believed that Maddock’s thrusting and growling could have anything to do with creating that precious life. No, it was the midwife’s strong hands and soothing voice as she urged me to push.

As soon as I looked at the helpless, squalling little creature, I was paralyzed by fear. He was so vulnerable, more so than any newborn of my kin. My mind rushed over every time I’d cracked a clam or an egg and feasted on the tender insides, and I saw how easy it would be to do the same to him. 

“Why is it screaming like that?” I gasped.

“He just misses the womb, child,” Hertha reassured me as she gathered the fouled sheets into a sack. “The air, the light, the noise- they frighten him.”

That was when I fell in love with my son, only minutes after falling in love with the midwife. He was just like me. Alone in this cruel surface world, we two would always understand each other.

“What’s happening?” The door creaked, and Maddock’ voice hit me like a slap.

“You have a fine healthy son,” Hertha said.

“Is she… is…” He stumbled and stopped. I didn’t bother turning on the pallet to look at him, instead keeping my eyes on the baby in case something tried to snatch him.

“Àile is well,” Hertha assured him.

“They’re talking about her out there,” Maddock said, trying to whisper. “Did she even cry out once?”

“No,” Hertha admitted. “Your wife is very brave.”

He grunted, and I heard him stepping towards us. I curled my exhausted body around my baby and managed a low growl. You won’t hurt it!

“Don’t do that.” His voice had been low and rough at the edges when he finally spoke. “Gods, woman, I’m not a monster.”

I almost laughed. He wouldn’t have said that if he’d seen how he looked that first night, sneaking up behind me while I lay naked on the beach, every inch of him covered in the skin of seals. Even as I laid there his enormous sealskin boots were level with my face, and I wondered if he meant to rub it in them.

Maddock was pleased with his son, then and forever after. But it was Hertha who taught me how to hold him properly, how to change him, how to walk him up and down the room when he cried in the night. I never minded. His little cries thrilled me with their feeble defiance of the world I also loathed. Hertha didn’t understand; she just laughed and said she’d never seen a mother so besotted.

There’s no laughter in her now. She hangs on her bench, breathing so quietly that I’m afraid every moment that she simply won’t have the energy to draw in her next breath. I move around and crouch in front of her, staring up into her face. She’s so beautiful, my Hertha, even with her eyes so swollen it makes me feel hot and sore just to look at them. I massage her hands as best I can.

“It was bad enough before,” she whispers. “No children, everyone whispering. But now… I’m all alone.”

“You’re not!” I’m relieved that the problem is so easy. “There’s me, and Hall! We won’t leave you alone.”

“Oh, Àile, you’re so sweet.” She tries to smile. “But it isn’t the same.”

I stare into her eyes, desperate to make her understand. “Yes, it is.”

And I press my lips to hers.

Her mouth is as soft as I’ve always dreamed, and the salt of her tears tastes like home. I surge against her, trying to gather all of her warmth and her goodness and her softness into myself. All I can think is _'At last' _over and over again. Gratitude swells in my chest.__

____

____

_Slap! ___

____

____

Hertha’s palm lashes at my face with so much force that I tip over and sprawl on the floor.

“What are you doing?” she gasps, with her still-bloody fingers over her mouth. Then she’s screaming. “Àile! What was that?”

“I… I just wanted… I didn’t mean to make you angry!” My own hand is covering my cheek, both of us protecting ourselves from each other.

“What is wrong with you?” She surges towards me, and I fall back before the rage in her eyes, scooting across the floor without daring to stand up. She keeps advancing until my back hits the wall, and though I know I’m stronger than she is, I cower down.

Hertha’s hands drop to her sides, and she slumps forward until I’m afraid she’ll fall. I look hopefully into her face, but she has lost none of her rage.

“What is wrong with you?” she says more softly. It’s an honest question, and perhaps if I answer honestly she’ll forgive me. She’ll see that I didn’t mean any harm, I just didn’t understand.

“I don’t belong here,” I say, and she releases a laugh that makes me shrink against the wall again.

“No, you don’t.” She turns and sinks once more onto the bench. Without looking at me, she points to the door. “Get out.”

I surge to her on my knees and clutch her skirt. The fabric tears in my grip. “Hertha, please, I’m sorry, please don’t--”

“Out!” Her voice is so sharp I expect blood to start bubbling from her lips. She shoves me away and pulls her dress back over her shoulders. “I never want to speak to you again, Àile. Leave.”

I pull myself from the floor and stumble to the door. I don’t bother looking back at Hertha; the sound of her quiet sobbing tells me more than I want to know. 

When I step outside, the sun is like another slap, and I can’t resist snarling at it. The old people are still standing around, and when I stagger towards them, they stare at me and back away, clearing a path for me.

I rush past them, hugging myself tightly, until something closes hard over my arm. I whirl, snarling and snapping, and as horrified shrieks rise around me I feel my teeth sinking into flesh. My teeth are blunt and dull compared to what they used to be, but blood tastes just as coppery-warm as ever. It soothes me and centers me, and I look for the first time at the face of my attacker.

Günnar’s cloudy eyes are wide as he stares at me. Blood trickles down his withered chest from the marks on his neck and shoulder. The wounds aren’t deep, but he collapses anyway.

“Günnar!” One of the old women kneels beside him. The rest keep their distance from me, and their vague fear has sharpened into something immediate. I catch Frigga’s eye, and she stumbles away.

“He’s dead!” the old woman wails, and I freeze. The wounds weren’t deep enough to kill!

“You’ve killed him, you bitch!”

Their fear is changing. Rage is beginning to surge, and I won’t meet this onslaught like I did Hertha’s. I will not fall back before these tottering fools. I will rip them limb from fragile limb if they try me.

I growl at them through a smile. They don’t come any closer, and I run past them, through the empty village streets towards the cottage.

The farther I go, the more rage I lose to pain. Günnar dead, the angry faces, and above it all Hertha, glaring down at me with her soft eyes lost in hate.

The old fools won’t come after me themselves, but when the men come back from the day’s fishing, they’ll tell them what happened. I could never fight Maddock off; how can I escape all of them? They’ll burn me. Hertha will probably light the pyre.

When I stagger to the door, Hall looks up guiltily from where he’s only half finished digging a new row for the garden. It’s a chore that should have been done hours ago.

“I just went out for a little bit, Módir, I was going to finish---” 

He stops short, his blue eyes almost starting from his speckled face, and I remember that my mouth is still smeared with blood.

“Módir, what happened?”

I’ve frightened him. It’s not the first time; I’ve never been a comforting mother. When he was two and he asked where Freya had gone, I told him that his little friend was dead of a fever. When he asked what ‘dead’ meant, I told him, with no tales of Maddock’s Valhalla or Father Brennan’s Heaven to soften the telling. When he asked if he would die, I said yes, someday. Hertha chided me for the nightmares that followed, but I never saw the point in lying to him. I still don’t.

“I killed Günnar. I didn’t mean to.”

His face goes pale under its freckles, and he drops his shovel. “Did… you eat him?”

“No. But I bit him.”

“Why did you do it?” 

“Because…” Because Maddock kidnapped me and he hurt me and Hertha rejected me and she was the only thing that made this place bearable but that’s wrong, because there was also you, my beautiful boy, but now I’m going to lose you too. “He surprised me. I didn’t mean to do it.”

“Then tell them that!” He’s crying now, and I wish like never before that I knew how. I would like to be making salt water as I died, just a tiny piece of home. 

I kneel to take him in my arms, which I haven’t had to do for a long time. It’s nine years since Hertha pulled him from between my legs, and now if he was standing he’d be almost as tall as I am. But it feels good to kneel and press him into myself, like I did when he was small and needed me.

He clutches me back so fiercely that I have to brace myself with a hand. My fingers sink into the soft ground he’s been turning up, and the hatred I feel at the land’s cool dominance is a dull, habitual thing. I barely notice it. All I can feel is my boy, blessing me with his tears.

“I won’t let them hurt you, Módir!” he sobs.

“It’ll only hurt if they do something to you,” I whisper back. “Be strong, not stupid.”

I stroke his hair with the hand that holds him, and the fingers in the dirt mirror the action, and they brush against something rough and manmade. I turn my head to see what it is.

Something made of roughly spun wool is peeking up out of the dirt. I pull at it, and more earth falls away. Hall turns in my arms to look with me as I tug at the strange object.

It’s a wool blanket, half rotted away, wrapped into a bundle. The blanket tears in my hand as I pull, and the contents spill into the dirt.

A sealskin.

At my gasp, Hall turns in my arms. I can’t look at him, can’t tear my eyes away. All he sees is a silver pelt, covered in speckles so dark they’re almost black, the same kind of skin that makes the shoes on his feet. 

“My skin,” I whisper.

It’s been eight years since I saw it. Eight years since the night I took it off to lie on the beach and woke to find it in the hands of a grinning fisherman. It should have rotted away with the blanket he buried it in, but there it is, gleaming like the most beautiful memory. Even if I were blind, I could never mistake it. 

“What do you mean?” The fear in Hall’s voice reaches me, but only barely. It takes more effort than I would have guessed to turn my head and look at him. His face is pale and unreadable.

“So it’s true,” he whispers. “You’re--” 

I reach for it with a trembling hand. It feels no different than any other sealskin. Have I stayed on land too long? Could I make the transformation again, even if I tried?

“Àile! Get away from him!” Maddock’s voice shatters my thoughts, and I clutch my son and my skin to my chest together. 

I look wildly around, and realize that the sun is setting. The men are home.

Maddock is only a bowshot from the cottage, but it’s still too far for me to make out his face. Three other men stride behind him, and they are all holding nets and spears. 

I dart a look at the beach. It’s only ten minute’s walk to the sea. How long if I run?

I look down into Hall’s face. He’s sobbing so hard I don’t know if he’ll hear me, but I put my mouth to his ear anyway.

“Maddock and Hertha will look after you. I’ll watch over you too, even if you don’t see me. I love you best of anything.”

Then I pull myself from his embrace, clutch my skin, and run.

One of the men shouts, and I know that they will be running, too, with no heavy skirts to hamper them. I pull and tear at my clothes as I slip over the gravel and through the spindly shrubs, stumbling as I kick away my shoes. A fishing spear strikes the ground just to my left, but I don’t look back.

Finally, the sliding stones give way to sand, then water. I rip my gown over my head as I wade out, and the water on my naked flesh feels like a promise. Feet pound the sand behind me, and I turn to look at the men, praying to whatever gods may be that the magic will still work, that my skin will close over me and I will slide into the sea. I put my hand over the still-burning flesh of my cheek. Perhaps her hand left a mark, and our fingers are twined. I meet Maddock’s eyes across the water as I wrap my skin around my shoulders, and together we wait.


End file.
